10 Great Reasons to Read Fiction in March

The Burgess Boysby Elizabeth StroutOakland readers are already joining the hold list for Elizabeth Strout’s new novel, her first since 2008’s Pulitzer Prize winning Olive Kitteridge. The Burgess Boys is about three estranged siblings brought back together by a family crisis, and a community fractured by a hate crime against Somali immigrants in small-town Maine. “Strout's tremendous talent at creating a compelling interest in what seems on the surface to be the barest of actions gives her latest work an almost meditative state, in which the fabric of family, loyalty, and difficult choices is revealed in layer after artful layer” (Booklist).

Oleander Girlby Chitra Banerjee DivakaruniKorobi Roy, orphaned at birth, has been raised by protective grandparents in Kolkata (Calcutta, India). Plain and unsophisticated Korobi makes a strange match for her wealthy and dashing fiancé Rajat, much to others’ surprise and disapproval. Soon after their formal engagement, Korobi learns that her father is indeed alive; he lives in the United States, he was never married to her mother, and he is an African-American man. With this news, she leaves for the U.S. to find him. Booklist calls Oleander Girl “utterly transfixing” and “a superbly well-plotted, charming, yet hard-hitting novel of family, marriage, and class.” Divakaruni may be best known for her 1997 novel set in Oakland, The Mistress of Spices, which was named one of the top 100 books of the 20th Century by the San Francisco Chronicle.

Murder Below Montparnasseby Cara BlackSan Francisco’s own Cara Black continues her popular Aimée Leduc mysteries set in present day Paris. An elderly Russian art collector may have clues to the whereabouts of private detective Leduc’s long lost mother. This is the thirteenth installment (following 2012’s Murder at the Lantern Rouge) in a series that has been called “taut, well-observed, and thoroughly entertaining” (Library Journal). If you’re new to this atmospheric series, start with number one, Murder in the Marais.

The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eatby Edward Kelsey MooreMoore’s debut novel follows the trajectory of the lives and friendship of three women from high school through middle age. The Supremes are an inseparable trio—Odette, Clarice and Barbara—and Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat is their regular hangout for forty years, as well as the first Black-owned business in Plainview, Indiana. Library Journal predicts it will be a best seller, and praises Moore’s use of “warmhearted humor and salty language to bring to life a tight-knit African-American community that's complete with competing churches, wacky relations, a fortune-telling fraud, and the ghost of a drunken Eleanor Roosevelt.”

The Fun Parts: Storiesby Sam LipsyteLipsyte is known as the satirical author of Home Land and The Ask, both New York Times Notable Books. His new collection sounds caustic, witty, offbeat and sometimes violent. The Fun Parts includes stories published in The Paris Review and The New Yorker; you can read a sample here. Publishers Weekly gives it a starred review, noting “Lipsyte's biting humor suffuses the collection, but it's his ability to control the relative darkness of each moment that makes the stories so engrossing.”

Sister Mineby Nalo HopkinsonHopkinson is a Jamaican-Canadian science fiction and fantasy writer who has been recognized as a World Fantasy Award winner and Nebula Award nominee. In Sister Mine, Hopkinson tells the story of the conjoined offspring of a deity and a human woman turned sea creature. Their surgical separation leads to the loss of power by one sister, and the gain of supernatural power by the other. Hopkinson’s many fans will look forward to this release.

A Thousand Pardonsby Jonathan DeeIn A Thousand Pardons, successful lawyer Ben Armstead’s poor behavior ends in spectacular disaster, ruining his career and his marriage. His ex-wife Helen successfully emerges from this crisis by starting a career as a PR maven who, in a departure from the prevailing wisdom of the public relations field, rescues her clients from their own catastrophes by convincing them to apologize and ask for forgiveness. In a starred review, Kirkus Reviews calls it a “triumph”, saying “Dee has written a page turner without sacrificing a smidgen of psychological insight”. Dee’s 2010 novel, The Privileges, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

A Tale for the Time Beingby Ruth OzekiA writer struggling with writer’s block on the coast of British Columbia is connected to a lonely and suicidal teen in Tokyo by means of a lunchbox that washes up on the beach after the 2011 tsunami carries it across the ocean. A Tale for the Time Being intertwines the stories of these two strangers with an account of the life of the teen’s great-grandmother, a Buddhist nun, in a “beautiful narrative remarkable for its unusual but attentively structured plot” (Booklist). Kirkus raves: “The novel's seamless web of language, metaphor and meaning can't be disentangled from its powerful emotional impact: These are characters we care for deeply, imparting vital life lessons through the magic of storytelling. A masterpiece, pure and simple.” Ozeki is the author of the best-selling novel My Year of Meats (1998).

Ghana Must Goby Taiye Selasi A Ghanaian man achieves the American Dream: he is a successful doctor in Boston with a wife and four children. But when he leaves his family for another woman, the family splits apart. Sixteen years later they travel from the United States to Accra, reunited by the patriarch’s funeral. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly calls it “gorgeous” and “driven by eloquent prose.” Debut novelist Selasi is a protégée of Toni Morrison and has a story included in The Best American Short Stories 2012.

How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asiaby Mohsin HamidIf this sounds like a business self-help book, it is because the author inventively evokes that genre to tell the rags-to-riches story of an unnamed narrator in an unidentified developing nation. The New York Times calls this novel a “a compelling story that works on two levels — in this case as a deeply moving and highly specific tale of love and ambition, and as a larger, metaphorical look at the mind-boggling social and economic changes sweeping ‘rising Asia.’” Moreover, “Mr. Hamid reaffirms his place as one of his generation’s most inventive and gifted writers.” Among other commendations, Hamid’s novelThe Reluctant Fundamentalist was shortlisted for the Man Booker Award and Moth Smoke was a PEN/Hemingway Award finalist. You can read an excerpt of How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asiahere.